Naturally, they’re tucked between the laces of my Chucks.

“Ugh. Hold that.” I shove the envelope at Drake and crouch down, extracting the sneaker from my purse and wrestling with the keys until they’re free to the tune of his laughter. “Bite me,” I snap back at him, shoving the key into the lock and turning it. I move to disable the alarm, but the absence of any lights on the box makes me freeze.

“You didn’t set it,” Drake breathes into my ear.

“Thank you, Sherlock.” I walk through the hall and drop my purse on the coffee table, reaching for the remote to turn the TV on at the same time.

Drake shuts the door as I reach down to pull my boots off and change the channel. I lose my balance and fall sideways onto the sofa, but hey, my boot is off, and I’m already sitting down to tug the second off.

Drake shakes his head, sitting down. The cupcakes end up on the table next to my purse, and I reach forward to open them when he pulls the contract and report from the envelope.

“Here.” He hands me the contract and keeps the report for himself.

I snort and snatch the report from him. “Uh, my case. You work homicide. This is Devin’s.”

He blows out a long, frustrated breath. “Fine. Then why am I here?”

“Because you got me a cupcake and you’re useful?” I raise my eyebrows. “Now, hush up a second.”

I tuck my legs beneath my butt and open the report. For the most part, it’s exactly what Natalie told me in the office, just more detailed. Nothing I didn’t already get from her though. I guessed that every threatening message had something to do with hurting her, but several messages have threatened sexual things. Not necessarily rape… Something about a tape, but Natalie insists in the interview that she has no idea what her stalker is talking about.

“This.” I lean toward Drake, my finger at the start of the paragraph. “If the stalker is her ex, do you think it’s a secret sex tape?”

His brow furrows as he reads it over. “How long were they together?”

“It was long term. She says she doesn’t know.”

His forehead wrinkles further. “Isn’t that a female thing—dates and shit?”

I look at him and shrug. “What’s today?”

“No idea.”

“So it’s entirely plausible that she doesn’t know the exact date their relationship started—so you could argue that her boyfriend could have filmed in secret.”

“Absolutely. Just because he’s only stalking her now doesn’t mean he wasn’t obsessed with her before.”

“I suppose.”

Most obsessive tendencies come from a personal relationship. Stalkers this thorough are rarely total strangers. You have to know the other person’s routine, when they’ll be in certain places, eating, drinking—hell, even peeing. Without being presumptuous, I think the evidence suggests that it’s totally her ex-boyfriend.

After all, if anyone knows her routine, he does.

“What do you know about a Nicholas Lucas?”

“That his name is fucking stupid because it’s ass-ass?”

“As-as,” I shoot back. “Don’t be a dick. This is a working date.”

“Remind me never to date another P.I.”

“You say that with the inflection of someone never intending to date again.”

“Maybe I’m not.”

“This isn’t on topic!” I shove the report at him. “I know that Devin won’t give me the police report, and since he has no kids, I can’t bribe him, so I’m playin’ on your good character for information.”

He cuts his eyes to me, but he grabs the report and focuses on it. His eyes flit over the numerous lines, and I know that, by the end of the paragraph, he’s completely enraptured by the interview.

I guess I’ll eat my cupcake, then.

I pull the sugary, soft goodness toward me and scoop the lemon candy through the frosting. Dropping it into my mouth, I focus back on Drake. He’s a page further, and he’s a much slower reader than I am. Maybe it’s because he’s the kind of guy who needs to know every single detail, whereas I’m the woman who skims it and makes her own decisions?

Hmmm. I dip my pinkie finger into the frosting and suck it off as his eyes continue to scour the report. Never once does he look up at me. Nope. One hundred percent focused on the papers in front of him—and for the first time, I see him in cop mode.

Not detective-my-career-depends-on-this mode. Cop mode.

The emotion across his face—that hardness, that solid determinedness—is nothing other than a desire to get to the bottom of a mystery.

If real life were Clue, he’d be the guy rolling the die every time, the conclusion written on the card tucked into his pocket.

“Not the boyfriend,” he mutters, dropping the report back on the cushion between us.

“Really? You think that?”

“Do I think he’s watchin’ her? Sure. They just broke up. Guy’s cut up. Wants to see if she is.”

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

He grunts. “Can I finish?”

“Sure,” I half lie, ’cause his last statement was way too bitter for a guy who dates twice, fucks, then says goodbye.

Drake stands, tucks his hands in his pockets, and walks toward my window. “Sounds like he got obsessive during the relationship because she was unfaithful. And that obsessiveness… It carried over. Made him into who he is today. Into the kind of guy who would hurt the fuck outta her in revenge.”

The paper crinkles as I grasp the report and set it on top of my contract. Old feelings rush through me, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest that we’ve dated once. What matters is the fact that the elephant in the room, the one standing between us, is so decorated with the past and dreams and realities and imaginary happenings.

And, God, it stands between us like a steel wall, because for all of our combined history, neither of us knows a thing about the time when I wasn’t in Holly Woods.

“I think…” I pause, staring at my fireplace directly in front of me. “I think we’re done today.”

I hear his breath from here, and it takes every bit of strength in my body not to look at him.

“I agree,” he says quietly. He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks to the door.

I focus on the almost-silent screen of the TV, because midafternoon TV is shit—let’s be honest.

My front door opens.

I close my eyes.

“I’ll e-mail you a full report on Nicholas Lucas,” Drake says—loud yet soft, understanding in every sense. “If you’re goin’ up against a guy who got away with murder, you need to know.”

I jump up, but he slams my door at the same time my feet hit the floor.

And I don’t know what to consider first—that my client’s stalker is an apparent murderer walking free, or that Drake walked out on our date, leaving his cupcake sitting on my coffee table.

I look at the dark-brown goodness, temptation filling me, almost beating down the deflated sadness from him leaving. But it feels…wrong to even consider touching that cake.

So I grab the stapled-together papers, my lemon cupcake, and go upstairs to my room, despite it being three in the afternoon.

Who the hell cares?

My phone buzzes with the incoming text messages. In my half-asleep state, I pull it from the nightstand and open the blinking rectangle stretching across the screen.

Mayor chats shit at three, Bek texts.

As opposed to any other time? I reply.

Bless her for thinking the mayor doesn’t chat shit at any other time.

Shut up. Supposed to be a debate with the guy going against him.

Alistair Harvey?

Sure. Him.

Ugh. The lack of fucks I have to give about this mayoral campaign are severely dismal. As in they amount to a big, fat fucking zero.

Mayor McDougall is the most corrupt person I’ve ever met in my life. Seriously—the man paid his way out of a cheating allegation twenty years ago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s done the same since. Fact is¸ the good mayor of Holly Woods has more fucking fireworks up his ass than the United States of America set off on Independence Day. If only he’d light half of them…